On Wed, Jul 23, 2008, Chris Marlatt wrote:
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/net/2008-06/msg00364.html has all the details. It's rather long thread but 1mpps was achieved on a single cpu IIRC (the server had multiple cpus but only one being used for forwarding). Firewall rules slowed it down quite a bit but theres also some work out there being done to minimize this.
Yah, all of that is happening. Some people keep asking why FreeBSD-4 forwarding was always much faster than same-hardware forwarding under current FreeBSD but at least thats finally being worked on. Of course, with my FreeBSD advocacy hat on, if you -want- to see something like FreeBSD handle 1mil+ pps forwarding then you should really drop the FreeBSD Foundation a line and introduce yourself. There are developers working on this (note: not me! :) who would benefit from equipment and funding. Anyway. Some PC class hardware is pretty damned fast. Some vendors even build highish-throughput firewalls and proxies out of PC class hardware. :) The "wah wah PC class hardware has anemic bus IO/memory IO/ CPU speed/ethernet modules and is thus too crap for serious routing" argument is pretty much over for at least 1 mil pps, perhaps more. 2c, Adrian